High Court nixes petition by Palestinians freed in Schalit deal and rearrested by IDF

By YONAH JEREMY BOB06/25/2014

The rejection means the six Hamas men will remain under arrest pending a final decision on whether they have violated the terms of their release.

The High Court of Justice on Wednesday rejected an emergency petition by six recently arrested Palestinians who had been released in the Gilad Schalit deal to cancel their temporary arrest until sufficient evidence was brought.

Justice Neal Hendel, writing on behalf of a panel that included Supreme Court President Asher Grunis and Justice Noam Sohlberg, rejected the Palestinians’ petition, which was filed by lawyer Avigdor Feldman.

The rejection means the six will remain under arrest pending a final decision on their status and whether they have violated the terms of their release.

Feldman had argued that the judicial committees that ordered the Palestinians’ temporary arrest had acted without authority, but the High Court disputed that argument, and added that the petition should have been made earlier and to a district court before appealing to the High Court.

The IDF spokesman said hearings on re-imprisonment of 21 Palestinians before a military judicial commission had begun.

As reported exclusively by The Jerusalem Post, on Tuesday the state was already seeking to re-imprison 54 Palestinians who were pardoned and released in the framework of the Schalit prisoners exchange deal.

The 54 were among the over 350 Palestinians arrested recently by the IDF during the ongoing search and rescue operation for the three kidnapped boys.

The IDF spokesman updated the number of prisoners scheduled to be rearrested to 55, and added that it had detained during the operation three other Palestinians from the Schalit deal that the army was not seeking to re-imprison.

Of the 55, requests to re-imprison 45 of the former convicts were submitted by the IDF West Bank Prosecutor to a judicial committee affiliated with the IDF West Bank courts, and requests for the detention of another 10 were submitted to a civilian judicial committee in Haifa.